Communique Amid the Electoral Farce, The Capitalist War Against the Peoples

TO THE CCRI CG EZLN
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN
To the Sixth Commission of the EZLN
To the National Indigenous Congress, CNI
To the Indigenous Governing Council, CIG
To Ma. de Jesús Patricio Martínez, Spokesperson of the CNI-CIG
To the Original Peoples, Tribes, Nations, Communities and Neighbourhoods that were never conquered
To the Sixth National and International
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
To the Insubordinate, Dignified and Rebellious Europe
To those who signed the Declaration for Life
To the free, independent, alternative media or whatever they‘re called. . .

Herman@s Tod@s

With the arrival of the “Fourth Transformation,” his government policy increased militarization toward indigenous peoples and communities, especially in Zapatista territory. Paramilitary groups and organized crime operate with complete impunity as guarantors of the imposition not only of deadly megaprojects such as the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor and the Morelos Integral Project; they are at the service of the State and big capital to carry out the dispossession of land, Mother Earth and life.

In the midst of their “ELECTORAL FARCE”, we see that, in recent weeks, nothing matters except their votes, their polls, their debates, their figures and their electoral preferences; but, above all, their strategy to attack and disqualify their enemies, as a campaign strategy.

On June 2, a “democracy” is not in dispute, much less a leftist one. What is really at stake is an economic and political power that seeks to sustain itself through militarization, impunity, and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few at the service of the big transnational corporations. Their plan is to sustain this “Fourth Transformation,” with a CAPITALIST WAR against indigenous peoples and communities.

Faced with the impunity and violence imposed on our territories, from the National Assembly for Water and Life. . .

WE DENOUNCE
First: In recent years, attacks on the Zapatista autonomous communities have been on the increase. In the Moisés y Gandhi region, the official municipality of Ocosingo, the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO) has attacked the EZLN Support Bases (BAEZLN), resulting in forced displacement, torture, enforced disappearance and attempted murder.

So far this year, 28 BAEZLN people were forcibly displaced, residents of the Local Autonomous Government, La Resistencia community, which had already been forcibly displaced by an attack in 2022. In January of this year, the Autonomous Primary School, 15 houses, nearby crops, theft of a shop and other property of the community were destroyed, in the village of Emiliano Zapata a pasture of the support bases was burned. In February, members (ORCAO) fired more than 100 shots at the Zapatista autonomous community of Moisés y Gandhi, more than 100 shots with high-calibre firearms. Let us not forget that in May 2023, Jorge López Sántiz BAEZLN was the victim of an armed attack that put his life at serious risk.

The money from social programs has been used to arm and empower criminal groups like ORCAO, increasing violence against the Zapatista autonomous communities. In Chiapas, as in the rest of the country, the program sowing envy has exacerbated violence over the land dispute, as ejidos and communities confront each other in order to access the individualized economic support that the program offers.

The simulation of reforestation is the pretext for dispossessing the peoples of the lands of collective use by destroying the social organization and their way of life, that is, it seeks to break the resistance, facilitating the entry of projects of death in favor of big business, with the help of the repressive forces of the state, the police, the National Guard and the army.

Attacks by criminal groups are allowed and overlaid by the Mexican state at its three levels of government. The comprehensive war of attrition against Zapatista autonomy, begun decades ago by the different political parties, has been intensified during this government of the fourth simulation.

Second: Since 2020, the Otomi community residing in the CDMX took over the premises of the ill-named National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, in demand for fair housing. Since the beginning of the takeover, the harassment by the State has been permanent; power cuts, a violent eviction attempt in October 2023, and the recent targeting and criminalization of comrade Diego García Bautista, who accompanies the dignified struggle of the Otomí community, as well as the presence of judicial officers around the comrade‘s home and the Casa de los Pueblos itself shows the contempt of the traitor Adelfo Regino Montes, director of the INPI and of the government of the Fourth Transformation.

The Otomi Community residing in the CDMX have been steadfast and steadfast in accompanying all just struggles, and are an example of organization, dignity and resilience. That is why the bad government directs its strategies and attacks against the comrades.

Third: In Puebla, the villages of the cholulteca region are holding a sit-in to prevent garbage from entering the San Pedro Cholula landfill, a criminal business from which businessmen and officials were getting rich. Since March 21, not a single kilo of rubbish has entered the garbage dump and in response to the resistance of the cholulteca villages, the government sent an operation with more than 500 police and riot groups to force the entry of garbage collection trucks. State and municipal police fired at the inhabitants who resisted the barricades to prevent the entry of these trucks. After many hours of repression directed towards the encampment and the barricades, the police and the National Guard units as well as the garbage trucks were forced into the garbage collection. .

The Governor of Puebla, Sergio Salomón Céspedes and the Secretary of the Interior Javier Aquino Limón continue to defend the interests of the company ProFaj Hidro Limpieza, which operated in the garbage dump, attacking the towns by opening investigation files and arrest warrants against the inhabitants of the region. However, the struggle of the cholulteca peoples continues and asserting their self-determination and autonomy, they will not back down.

In this six-year period, the violence of the State increased against the cholulteca peoples: Miguel López Vega first political prisoner of the 4th transformation and Alejandro Torres Chocolatl persecuted, both defenders of the Metlapanapa River. We do not forget the operation with more than 500 members of the National Guard, state and municipal police to evict the villages of Altepelmecalli and hand over the facilities to the criminal company Bonafont Danone, nor do we forget the repression of the state and municipal police in the town of San Lucas Nextetelco against those who opposed the construction of a police complex.

Fourth: Almost 10 years after the forced disappearance of the 43 teachers from Ayotzinapa, the government continues to receive only contempt. Following numerous investigations which point to the involvement of the army as a fundamental part of the disappearance, the parents have been denied access to SEDENA documents that are key to finding the teachers. The federal executive has singled out lawyer Vidulfo Rosales as an “enemy of the system” – a bloody persecution of comrades who for almost 10 years have not given up the struggle to find the 43 students alive.

Fifth: More than 116,000 disappeared is the figure with which the government closes. Most of the cases with no progress in the search are the searching mothers and relatives who have done the cruel work of finding them, in many cases they have found only remains and with pressure on the institutions to carry out the process of recognition, they have managed to find their families to give them a little peace. But thousands upon thousands of families still know nothing of those who were taken from them. Mothers and relatives are constantly at risk of being attacked by criminal groups, police, and military, encouraged by the disdain with which the federal executive treats them. Andrés Manuel López Obrador ends his six-year term stained with the blood of 7 seeking mothers who were murdered for searching for their children.

Sixth: In 2023, Mexico detained 782,176 migrants, the historical record. None of these persons have committed a crime. Migrating and seeking asylum is a human and international right. Rape, kidnapping, extortion and murder of migrants is very common. 6 out of 10 women are raped on their way through Mexico. According to official data, every month, about 41 migrants in Mexico are victims of theft, kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, trafficking and illegal detention. However, the actual number is much higher; they do not report it out of fear, lack of rights, and because often it is the INM itself that is extorting them and handing them over to organized crime.

We demand justice and comprehensive reparation for the victims of the fire in Ciudad Juárez, which occurred in March 2023. The INM let 40 migrants die – it was a crime of the state. Migration stations were actually prisons for innocent people and should be abolished.

Seventh: Freedom of expression and research is punishable by death in this country, in the last six years 56 journalists and community communicators were murdered for publishing the truth. Mexico is now one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism. The federal executive legitimizes violence against journalists who take a critical stance towards their government and its criminal connections.

Eighth: The systematic pattern of criminalization is a veritable factory of culprits, especially when it comes to indigenous peoples who defend the land and territory. Racism and contempt were the reason for impeding the exercise of political rights, autonomy and self-determination. The fabric of culprits is characterized by the impunity with which the authorities responsible for exercising the power of justice operate:

• Collusion between the State Attorney’s Office and the State Judiciary
• The complicity of the Office of the Attorney-General for Indigenous Justice, which is used to control the peoples.

• False accusations, torture, excessive use of informal pretrial detention and false witnesses
• Detentions with the participation of members of the Army, the National Guard (GN); an inactive accomplice of the judiciary.
• Arbitrary detentions aimed at exemplary punishment for the defence of human rights, land and territory, and above all the criminalization of defenders of mother land and territory, threaten the entire community and are a means of repression, with the intention of nullifying those who defend the right to life, from their own identity, their way of organizing and their autonomy as indigenous peoples.
Examples are left over:

JOSE DÍAZ
José Díaz Gómez, a Cho‘l indigenous and peasant, is held hostage by the Government of the State of Chiapas and a victim of the culprit factory, in retaliation for his Zapatista political adherence. He has been unjustly imprisoned since 25 November 2022, falsely accused of robbery with violence.

José was arbitrarily detained, with excessive use of force, tortured, disappeared and held incommunicado by the specialized police attached to the Selva District Attorney‘s Office. At the prosecutor‘s office, he was forced to put his fingerprint and sign several blank papers. He was not assisted by a translator of his native language, nor by a lawyer. Judges and prosecutors extend the proceedings and informal pre-trial detention (imprisonment without sentence).

José‘s health, and therefore his life, is at risk because of prison overcrowding, and poor medical care. He shares the cell with 18 other people in a space of approximately 3 metres by 3 metres; he has difficulty sleeping – he only manages to sleep for 2 or 3 hours a day; which shows the existence of inhuman conditions of detention, to put it more clearly, he survives under conditions of TORTURE.

PRISONERS OF SAN JUAN CANCUC.
The Mayan Tseltal defenders of San Juan Cancuc: Manuel Sántiz Cruz, Agustín Pérez Domínguez, Juan Velasco Aguilar, Martín Pérez Domínguez and Agustín Pérez Velasco, have been unjustly imprisoned in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, for two years for resisting, through community organization, the militarization of their territory and the installation of megaprojects, such as the hydroelectric dam and the San Cristóbal-Palenque superhighway. The Indigenous Justice Prosecutor‘s Office fabricated an offence against them and they were all sentenced to 25 years in prison for aggravated homicide, despite the fact that the evidence was inconsistent as it was a fabricated offence.

SAUL ROSALES MELÉNDEZ.
In July 2022, the community president of San Pedro Tlalcuapan was arrested on a false charge of murder. Saúl Rosales had participated in the defense of the Matlalcuéyetl forest and that was the real reason for the punishment that the State now imposes on him. On 15 March, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

ELOXOCHITLAN PRISONERS FROM FLORES MAGÓN.
After 9 years of struggle and resistance, the dignified people of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón have taken away from the State the freedoms of four fellow prisoners falsely accused of homicide by the bad government of Oaxaca and the Zepeda family, despite the multiple protections won. Three comrades remain imprisoned for whom we continue to demand immediate release: Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito and Francisco Durán.

KARLA AND MAGDA.
In April 2022, Karla and Magda were arrested in the midst of a mega-operation to evict the Okupa Cuba carried out at the CNDH facilities. This occupation was carried out in solidarity with the mothers of murdered women who were despised and forgotten by the institution. Charged with crimes they did not commit (aggravated robbery, damage to property and crimes against health), Karla and Magda were held in Santa Marta Acatitla prison for 10 months. Pressure from family members and solidarity groups won their release in February 2023, but their investigative file was reopened due to new charges, which put them at risk of going back to prison.

Ninth: Stigmatization also happens to organizations that defend human rights, such as the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) and the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (ProDH Center), which were repeatedly disqualified by Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the morning after calling them conservative and exaggerating the violence reported by these organizations.

These statements put human rights defenders at risk, as it cannot be denied that Mexico remains one of the most dangerous countries for the defence of human rights and journalism. Between January 2019 and February 2024, there have been at least 103 killings of land defenders, more than 40 journalists, 38 defenders or journalists have disappeared, 25 have been released and 13 are still missing.

Today, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador represses and discredits anyone who does not think like him, just as bad governments of different political parties did in the past.

Faced with the attacks of the government and capital against those who defend life, freedom and dignity, We respond with autonomy and self-determination. From this space of meeting and organization, we make our own the Zapatista initiative, so that regardless of calendar and/or geography, we join the process of building “THE COMMON AND THE NON-PROPERTY. ” The defense of the Decree prohibiting the existence of garbage dumps, the extraction of water for industrial purposes and its contamination in the cholulteca region; the Decree prohibiting mining in Morelos; the struggle and resistance of the House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities “Samir Flores Soberanes”; the taking of the well of Barrio Cuarto in Santiago Mexquititlán; the recovery of the library of San Gregorio Atlapulco, today Tlamachtiloyan; the defense of the river in Santiago Jalisco; the demand for remediation of sanitary landfills in Santa María Coapan, Puebla and the Laureles, Jalisco; the national unification of seeking families; the installation of the University Camp for Palestine at UNAM; the decision of the peoples to take action in the defence of life and territory.

We make our own demands for the freedom of all political prisoners; we demand the immediate presentation alive of our 43 Ayotzinapa Normalistas, forcibly disappeared by the Army and the more than 116,000 disappeared in Mexico, justice for Verónica Guerrero, justice for Samir Flores Soberanes and all the defenders of the territory, journalists, women and mothers who were murdered.

SINCERELY.

For the Integral Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Water, Land and Freedom
Zapata Vive, the Fight Continues
Samir Live the Struggle Continues
Stop the War Against the Zapatista Peoples
Until Dignity and Justice become customary
Because Alive They took them, Alive We want them
Long Live the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN
Long live the National Indigenous Congress, CNI-CIG
Freedom for Saúl Rosales Meléndez, from San Pedro Tlalcuapan, Tlaxcala
Freedom for José Díaz, Zapatista Support Base
Freedom for Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito, Francisco Durán, Marcelino Miramón
of the People of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca
Freedom for David Hernández of Puente Madera, Oaxaca
A Nosotrxs without a State
No to the Mayan Train
No to the Morelos Integral Project
No to the Interoceanic Corridor

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WATER AND LIFE